• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia
TechAI

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman dampens expectations over A.I. like ChatGPT: ‘History suggests large economic effects will take longer than many people seem to expect’

By
Chloe Taylor
Chloe Taylor
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Chloe Taylor
Chloe Taylor
Down Arrow Button Icon
April 3, 2023, 10:45 AM ET
Paul Krugman poses after an interview with Europa Press at the Rafael del Pino Foundation on February 17, 2020 in Madrid, Spain.
Paul Krugman, pictured in February 2020, has predicted that A.I. like ChatGPT will not have a major economic impact anytime soon.Ricardo Rubio—Europa Press/Getty Images

The A.I. race is heating up, with tech giants Microsoft, Google, and Baidu among those ramping up their efforts to launch advanced chatbots after OpenAI’s ChatGPT took the world by storm.

With billions being invested in the development of cutting-edge A.I. technology, many are speculating about how it will disrupt our day-to-day lives—leading to predictions around jobs being lost to machines, calls for greater A.I. governance, and forecasts that the world will soon see the dawn of a new A.I. era.

However, one high-profile economist isn’t convinced that the A.I. being rolled out right now will have much of an impact in the immediate future.

Paul Krugman, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2008 and served on the Council of Economic Advisers under the Reagan administration, said in a New York Times op-ed on Friday that the rise of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard were unlikely to make any major economic headway just yet.

“History suggests that large economic effects from A.I. will take longer to materialize than many people currently seem to expect,” Krugman, a professor emeritus at Princeton, wrote.

He pointed out that historical innovations like the computing revolution or the electrification of industry had taken decades to have any notable impact on the economy.

Krugman also pointed to the famous 1965 theory by Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel, which stated the number of transistors on a microchip doubles about every two years—an observation that became known as Moore’s law.

“For at least two decades after Moore’s law kicked in, America, far from experiencing a productivity boom, suffered from a protracted productivity slowdown,” he noted. “The boom kicked in only during the 1990s, and even then it was a bit disappointing.

“The lag in this economic payoff even ended up being similar in length to the lagged payoff from electrification,” he added. “Having a technology isn’t enough. You also have to figure out what to do with it.”

Krugman said in his editorial that the great economic boom that unfolded between the 1940s and 1970s was actually the result of technologies like the internal combustion engine that came into being decades earlier.

“That’s not to say that artificial intelligence won’t have huge economic impacts,” he conceded. “But history suggests that they won’t come quickly. ChatGPT and whatever follows are probably an economic story for the 2030s, not for the next few years.”

While Krugman argued that A.I. models like ChatGPT would eventually take over a significant number of tasks currently done by human beings, “nobody really knows” how big the effect of such a shift would be on society.

“Predictions about the economic impact of technology are notoriously unreliable,” he said, insisting that LLMs in their current form should not hugely affect economic projections for the next year—or even the next decade.

However, he conceded that this “doesn’t mean we should ignore the implications of a possible A.I.-driven boom…The longer-run prospects for economic growth do look better now than they did before computers began doing such good imitations of people.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but anyone who predicts a radical acceleration of economic growth thanks to A.I.—which would lead to a large rise in tax receipts—and simultaneously predicts a future fiscal crisis unless we make drastic cuts to Medicare and Social Security isn’t making much sense,” Krugman said.

Subscribe to Well Adjusted, our newsletter full of simple strategies to work smarter and live better, from the Fortune Well team. Sign up today.
About the Author
By Chloe Taylor
LinkedIn iconTwitter icon
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

AWS
Big TechMarkets
Amazon’s cloud sales are growing the most in 15 quarters. Investors sent the stock down on AI capex fears
By Anne D'Innocenzio and The Associated PressApril 30, 2026
4 minutes ago
AstraZeneca CFO Aradhana Sarin
BankingCFO Daily
How AstraZeneca’s 17,000 AI-certified employees are helping it reach a ‘stretch goal’ of $80 billion in revenue
By Sheryl EstradaApril 30, 2026
2 hours ago
agentic
CommentaryAI agents
Why your data infrastructure — not your AI model — will determine whether Agentic AI scales
By Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Stephen Henriques, Catherine Dai and Zander JeinthanuttkanontApril 30, 2026
2 hours ago
The startup that wants to give surgeons X-ray vision
NewslettersTerm Sheet
The startup that wants to give surgeons X-ray vision
By Allie GarfinkleApril 30, 2026
2 hours ago
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian at Fortune Brainstorm AI 2025 in San Francisco. (Photo: Stuart Isett/Fortune)
NewslettersFortune Tech
Google Cloud is almost one-fifth of Alphabet’s business
By Andrew NuscaApril 30, 2026
3 hours ago
Photo: Donald Trump
Big TechMarkets
With no end in sight, Trump considers new options in Iran war—including the ‘Dark Eagle’ hypersonic missile
By Jim EdwardsApril 30, 2026
4 hours ago

Most Popular

Apple cofounder Ronald Wayne—whose stake would be worth up to $400 billion had he not sold it in 1976—says that at 91, he has no regrets
Success
Apple cofounder Ronald Wayne—whose stake would be worth up to $400 billion had he not sold it in 1976—says that at 91, he has no regrets
By Preston ForeApril 27, 2026
3 days ago
Jamie Dimon gets candid about national debt: ‘There will be a bond crisis, and then we’ll have to deal with it’
Economy
Jamie Dimon gets candid about national debt: ‘There will be a bond crisis, and then we’ll have to deal with it’
By Eleanor PringleApril 29, 2026
1 day ago
‘They left me no choice’: Powell isn’t going anywhere—blocking Trump from another Fed appointee
Banking
‘They left me no choice’: Powell isn’t going anywhere—blocking Trump from another Fed appointee
By Eva RoytburgApril 29, 2026
19 hours ago
‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers
AI
‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers
By Sasha RogelbergApril 28, 2026
2 days ago
‘Take the money and run’: Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke on why the UAE quit OPEC
Energy
‘Take the money and run’: Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke on why the UAE quit OPEC
By Shawn TullyApril 29, 2026
1 day ago
More than two-thirds of U.S. schools say they’re unable to afford the cost of student free lunch—and MAHA’s dietary guidelines may make it worse
Economy
More than two-thirds of U.S. schools say they’re unable to afford the cost of student free lunch—and MAHA’s dietary guidelines may make it worse
By Sasha RogelbergApril 29, 2026
1 day ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.